Guruprasad Nagarajan's Blog, page 2
April 16, 2014
Pay with a tweet to download a sample of Ten Twisted Tales.
All right, let's see how this works. After trying facebook ads, Adwords and Bing and dabbling with Goodreads, I just started a Pay with a tweet campaign a couple of days ago. You can download a sample of my short story collection Ten Twisted Tales to get an idea of what the stories are about, the style of writing, etc, and should you be so (hopefully) inclined to purchase, you can do so on this site. There are five stories in the PDF. You can click the link (or copy paste it if it doesn't work for some reason): http://paywithatweet.com/pay?id=... Thank you.
April 8, 2014
Croissants and sambar
I was listening to a rendition of an excellent song written by the fiery Indian freedom fighter poet Bharathiyar the other day. It was a fusion number and sounded quite fine till the girls started singing. They were mispronouncing all the words that had ‘s’ with ‘sh’ (Aasai was Aashai and Nesam was Nesham). This ruined the whole song and the experience for me.
I mean if you are Sean Connery, I can undershtand you shaying thingsh like that but these were singers from the south (shingers from the shouth?). Even if you were not from South India, wouldn’t you learn to get the pronunciation right, no matter which language you were singing in? Can you get away with singing a popular English song on stage, mispronouncing all the words, saying shit for sit, shelf-control instead of self-control? How about the other way round, replacing 's' for 'sh'? Is that ok? Best wisses anyone? Nuclear fisson? I doubt that.
Thing is, the very same people would go to great lengths to learn how to pronounce a foreign word, and mock you if you got it wrong. “It’s not Agnes B, it’s Anya Bay”, or “crosson’ not croissant”, they would say and still get sambar wrong. People who are from the North and West (and East I’ sure), always make it sound like you are eating idlis with a deer. That’s want sambar is (prounouced saambur). It’s an easy word to say, saam followed by baar. But no, we don’t mind butchering an Indian language as long as we get LanVin right.
I mean if you are Sean Connery, I can undershtand you shaying thingsh like that but these were singers from the south (shingers from the shouth?). Even if you were not from South India, wouldn’t you learn to get the pronunciation right, no matter which language you were singing in? Can you get away with singing a popular English song on stage, mispronouncing all the words, saying shit for sit, shelf-control instead of self-control? How about the other way round, replacing 's' for 'sh'? Is that ok? Best wisses anyone? Nuclear fisson? I doubt that.
Thing is, the very same people would go to great lengths to learn how to pronounce a foreign word, and mock you if you got it wrong. “It’s not Agnes B, it’s Anya Bay”, or “crosson’ not croissant”, they would say and still get sambar wrong. People who are from the North and West (and East I’ sure), always make it sound like you are eating idlis with a deer. That’s want sambar is (prounouced saambur). It’s an easy word to say, saam followed by baar. But no, we don’t mind butchering an Indian language as long as we get LanVin right.
Screw clarity
Studying in Tamil medium until 10th standard, I used to be in awe of students from English medium classes when they rattled off in that foreign language so fluently. It was fascinating to hear the words roll off their tongues in an incomprehensible cadence. Incomprehensible because it made no sense at all to me. It was the speed with which the words tumbled off that was impressive.
It was then I decided that I would one day learn to speak English as fluently and effortlessly as these gifted students. And fast, of course faster. Much faster.
Because I was led to believe that the faster you spoke, the better you were at it, and if clarity was compromised, so be it. This unwritten rule was lauded every time a relative, a friend or a famous personality was caught spewing torrents of words in English.
For instance, people used to narrate the example of a famous politician from Tamil Nadu who went to the US and asked a random guy for 'Ten ton tin', and they were extremely impressed when the newspaper (allegedly) reported that the American dude did not understand a word of what the politician said (even though there were just three, if you think about it). A similar sort of veneration to speed over clarity was extended to a quiz guy on TV. Even though no one had a clue to what he was rattling off, they were suitably impressed all the same (reminds me of Catch 22 line, 'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit).
This made me wonder: Why would you go to a foreign country and speak the native language so fast that even three words were hard to understand? If confusing the other guy was the agenda, then he might as well have spoken in Swahili (the guy might have understood him, probably), I felt.
Isn't the point of communication clarity? That when I say something, you understand what I'm saying? Apparently not.
Which brings me to Japan. I've been there quite a few times over the years, and my wife and I get by beautifully with a point and speak book. It's a wonderful little book that has pictures of food, vegetables, buses and trains,beverages and dishes, names of cities and destination. And the descriptions are in Japanese and English so we are on the same page, so to speak. If I want to go to a particular place, I point to the page that says, 'Please take me to ...' and fill in the blank orally and he takes me there. I order food by pointing to the pictures. I can 'talk' to anyone. They don't know English and I don't know Japanese. It works brilliantly. And it does away with not only speed, but whole sentences. I say 'no fish, no meat', they scratch their heads and say, 'shrimpu?' I say no, they say 'gomennasai' and I walk to the next shop. Simple. The way it should be, eh?
It was then I decided that I would one day learn to speak English as fluently and effortlessly as these gifted students. And fast, of course faster. Much faster.
Because I was led to believe that the faster you spoke, the better you were at it, and if clarity was compromised, so be it. This unwritten rule was lauded every time a relative, a friend or a famous personality was caught spewing torrents of words in English.
For instance, people used to narrate the example of a famous politician from Tamil Nadu who went to the US and asked a random guy for 'Ten ton tin', and they were extremely impressed when the newspaper (allegedly) reported that the American dude did not understand a word of what the politician said (even though there were just three, if you think about it). A similar sort of veneration to speed over clarity was extended to a quiz guy on TV. Even though no one had a clue to what he was rattling off, they were suitably impressed all the same (reminds me of Catch 22 line, 'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit).
This made me wonder: Why would you go to a foreign country and speak the native language so fast that even three words were hard to understand? If confusing the other guy was the agenda, then he might as well have spoken in Swahili (the guy might have understood him, probably), I felt.
Isn't the point of communication clarity? That when I say something, you understand what I'm saying? Apparently not.
Which brings me to Japan. I've been there quite a few times over the years, and my wife and I get by beautifully with a point and speak book. It's a wonderful little book that has pictures of food, vegetables, buses and trains,beverages and dishes, names of cities and destination. And the descriptions are in Japanese and English so we are on the same page, so to speak. If I want to go to a particular place, I point to the page that says, 'Please take me to ...' and fill in the blank orally and he takes me there. I order food by pointing to the pictures. I can 'talk' to anyone. They don't know English and I don't know Japanese. It works brilliantly. And it does away with not only speed, but whole sentences. I say 'no fish, no meat', they scratch their heads and say, 'shrimpu?' I say no, they say 'gomennasai' and I walk to the next shop. Simple. The way it should be, eh?
April 1, 2014
My 15 minutes with Warhol.
As I went around the exhibition halls at the Mori Art Museum in the confusingly sprawling Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, featuring the creative output of the 15-minute man, I wondered where Andy Warhol would be without Campbell soup cans and screen-printing? Really. You take away those two from him, and it’s like taking away the cape and the weird-arm flying posture from Superman. They’re just not the same without their trademark symbols.
Most of his work featured Campbell cans and celebrity images souped up (ha!) with screen-printing technology. Apparently, he would copy a picture from a pop art magazine over and over using screen-printing, paste them on a canvas and put them up.
The exhibit had a section with his time capsules containing several of his everyday collections of things like magazines, doctor’s prescriptions, scrap papers and such.
The walls were printed with some of his sayings which were quite interesting. Here are a few:
“I never wanted to be a painter, I’ve always wanted to be a tap dancer instead.”
“I think everyone should be a machine”
“I had a job looking through fashion magazines in a department store at fifty cents an hour to look for ideas. I don’t ever remember finding one or getting one.”
“I used to work for these magazines, I thought I was being original and they wouldn’t want it, that’s’ when I stopped being imaginative.”
“My instinct says if I don’t think about it, it’s right. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong.”
“I don’t think people die, they just go to department stores”.
And there were times when he was literally taking the piss. He used to urinate on canvas with a copper based paint and the resulting p(ee)aintings were sold as oxidation artworks. You should read the critics gushing about it. One compares it to the ancient art of alchemy and says Warhol alchemically was converting his own urine into art. It’s amazing what you can do when you have more than 15 minutes of fame and to what groveling lengths your critics would go to justify and rationalize everything that comes out of you. Literally.
That said, it was half a day well spent, although it left me wondering where he is now. Probably at a department store, you know, the aisle where the soup cans are?
Most of his work featured Campbell cans and celebrity images souped up (ha!) with screen-printing technology. Apparently, he would copy a picture from a pop art magazine over and over using screen-printing, paste them on a canvas and put them up.
The exhibit had a section with his time capsules containing several of his everyday collections of things like magazines, doctor’s prescriptions, scrap papers and such.
The walls were printed with some of his sayings which were quite interesting. Here are a few:
“I never wanted to be a painter, I’ve always wanted to be a tap dancer instead.”
“I think everyone should be a machine”
“I had a job looking through fashion magazines in a department store at fifty cents an hour to look for ideas. I don’t ever remember finding one or getting one.”
“I used to work for these magazines, I thought I was being original and they wouldn’t want it, that’s’ when I stopped being imaginative.”
“My instinct says if I don’t think about it, it’s right. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong.”
“I don’t think people die, they just go to department stores”.
And there were times when he was literally taking the piss. He used to urinate on canvas with a copper based paint and the resulting p(ee)aintings were sold as oxidation artworks. You should read the critics gushing about it. One compares it to the ancient art of alchemy and says Warhol alchemically was converting his own urine into art. It’s amazing what you can do when you have more than 15 minutes of fame and to what groveling lengths your critics would go to justify and rationalize everything that comes out of you. Literally.
That said, it was half a day well spent, although it left me wondering where he is now. Probably at a department store, you know, the aisle where the soup cans are?
Ignorance maybe bliss but illiteracy opens many a door.
There was a time when illiteracy was synonymous with thumbprints. Back home, people who couldn’t sign their names on the dotted lines were usually labeled ‘thumb print’ cases, meaning illiterates. Fast forward to today, when a guy in the office came round getting everybody’s thumbprints on a little glass topped gadget like the ones you see at sophisticated airport immigration counters. This, I was told, was to do away with the card access system (which can be a pain, especially when your wallet is pregnant like Gorge Costanza’s wallet which actually tilts his posture considerably).
It left me marveling at the way human beings shift their perspective over time. From its rather ignominious association with the unlettered, the humble thumb print has come a long way (and is probably holding a Virginia Slims) to be at the forefront of security technology, going where no thumb has gone before, to the final frontier of highly secured office doors everywhere, as if to say, ‘I maybe illiterate but I can get in, can you, you educated punk?’
Thumbs up has an altogether new meaning, don’t you think?
It left me marveling at the way human beings shift their perspective over time. From its rather ignominious association with the unlettered, the humble thumb print has come a long way (and is probably holding a Virginia Slims) to be at the forefront of security technology, going where no thumb has gone before, to the final frontier of highly secured office doors everywhere, as if to say, ‘I maybe illiterate but I can get in, can you, you educated punk?’
Thumbs up has an altogether new meaning, don’t you think?
February 20, 2014
KDP SELECT - my experience
I enrolled my fiction, Ten Twisted Tales, a collection of short stories with a twist, a la Roald Dahl and O.Henry, on KDP Select three months ago just to test it out. KDP Select, if you’re new to the term, means you tie your ebook to Amazon for three months; it’s an exclusive contract which prevents you from selling your digital books on any digital media. You can of course sell your physical copies.
I chose KDP Select after reading that there were many authors for whom it made a lot of sense and money and turned them into Kindle millionaires while making them irresistibly attractive to supermodels and blessed them with telepathy and other super powers. For the rest, it delivered as much as a dishonest politician does for his country. It did the latter for me.
I followed the guidelines to the ‘t’, scheduled free giveaways, spaced them out, advertised the promo online through facebook and Adwords but didn’t do much in terms of downloads. All together, the downloads were about hundred and fifty. I was a bit surprised at first as some author accounts waxed lyrical about how the entire population of the hemisphere where the sun was shining while they (the authors, not the population) were asleep had downloaded gazillion copies, and how their ebooks raced up the ranking to the number one spot faster than Usain Bolt. I wasn’t disappointed as it was an experiment. And as experiments go, it was useful in the sense it taught me never to try it again. Like playing golf in a thunderstorm.
I’m back to selling it from my website, and other etailers. I’m currently promoting Ten Twisted Tales through Goodreads advertising. Fair amount of views but no click throughs (also known as close but no CTR). Apparently it works better for giveaways, perhaps I’ll try that.
I chose KDP Select after reading that there were many authors for whom it made a lot of sense and money and turned them into Kindle millionaires while making them irresistibly attractive to supermodels and blessed them with telepathy and other super powers. For the rest, it delivered as much as a dishonest politician does for his country. It did the latter for me.
I followed the guidelines to the ‘t’, scheduled free giveaways, spaced them out, advertised the promo online through facebook and Adwords but didn’t do much in terms of downloads. All together, the downloads were about hundred and fifty. I was a bit surprised at first as some author accounts waxed lyrical about how the entire population of the hemisphere where the sun was shining while they (the authors, not the population) were asleep had downloaded gazillion copies, and how their ebooks raced up the ranking to the number one spot faster than Usain Bolt. I wasn’t disappointed as it was an experiment. And as experiments go, it was useful in the sense it taught me never to try it again. Like playing golf in a thunderstorm.
I’m back to selling it from my website, and other etailers. I’m currently promoting Ten Twisted Tales through Goodreads advertising. Fair amount of views but no click throughs (also known as close but no CTR). Apparently it works better for giveaways, perhaps I’ll try that.
January 26, 2014
What do you do if your e-books don’t sell like Stephen King novels?
Well, for starters, you and I write them. And we are complete non-entities in this ever-growing sea of self-published authors. I must tell you why I’m writing this piece. A newly published author in a facebook group I belong to, was expressing his frustration at his e-book not selling to his expectations. A familiar story, you’d agree.
So I told him we are all in the same sea and all we can do is just keep writing as many books as we can; make sure the stories are well thought out, well written, proof-checked, and properly formatted; advertise, get the word around and leave the rest to the Universe.
I told him that I have written a short story collection, two children’s story, (with 50% of the proceeds going to elephant conservation as the main character is a baby elephant), a ‘how-to’ book on creating an e-commerce website, and another short story. I have advertised on facebook, Google Adwords, Bing and posted on my facebook status page. I put them up at all the major e-tailers, and created a dot com website from which people could buy direct. Let me tell you, I am not laughing all the way to the bank yet. It’s still at a frown stage, hopefully, it will crease into a smile, then widen into a maniacal laughter at which point the security guard at my bank might want to check my sanity before letting me in.
The point is, we are writers. And like a lot of the now-famous authors say about the days before stardom sought them out to the bestseller list, a writer writes, no matter what. Stephen King wrote in a trailer park. Ray Bradbury on borrowed typewriters in local libraries. Joseph Heller took eight years to write the masterpiece Catch 22 which was ironically rejected 22 times. You should read the list of famous rejection letters if you want inspiration.
The reason we must keep writing, is that it’s unwise to stop at one. Even if it gets picked up by the publishers in a freak coincidence, what next? Are you going to say, ‘Sorry, I could only do one?’ So the more you have, the better the chances of selling. At least people checking out your profile on social media and e-tailers might be impressed enough to try one of your offerings, and if they like it, they might even buy more.
Like someone said, there are two situations in life: one where you can control and another where you can’t. And in the latter scenario, the only thing you can do is control how you react to them. Tearing your hair out, getting frustrated and yelling out the window will not help. It might give temporary relief, but, in the long term, it will drag you down.
Another anecdote comes to mind, about this student who was impatient to learn the art of sword fighting from a Zen master. Student asks the master how long it would take him to be good at it. Master says ten years. Student says he doesn’t have that much time and that he needs to learn quickly. To which the master says in that case it will take twenty years.
One last dip into the philosophical river to shore up the morale. It’s from the Bhagavad Gita, Song of the Lord, a sacred Hindu text (part of the epic Mahabharata), where Lord Krishna, Bhagavan, tells Arjuna the reluctant warrior that his duty is to fight and leave the fruits of it to Him. The essence of it was expressed in the Rober redford movie titled the Legend of Bagger Vance with Will Smith playing Bagger Vance (Bhagavan) and Matt Damon the reluctant golfer was R.Junuh (Arjuna).
So keep writing and let the sales happen as and when. If we focus on the writing, the rest will take care of itself.
So I told him we are all in the same sea and all we can do is just keep writing as many books as we can; make sure the stories are well thought out, well written, proof-checked, and properly formatted; advertise, get the word around and leave the rest to the Universe.
I told him that I have written a short story collection, two children’s story, (with 50% of the proceeds going to elephant conservation as the main character is a baby elephant), a ‘how-to’ book on creating an e-commerce website, and another short story. I have advertised on facebook, Google Adwords, Bing and posted on my facebook status page. I put them up at all the major e-tailers, and created a dot com website from which people could buy direct. Let me tell you, I am not laughing all the way to the bank yet. It’s still at a frown stage, hopefully, it will crease into a smile, then widen into a maniacal laughter at which point the security guard at my bank might want to check my sanity before letting me in.
The point is, we are writers. And like a lot of the now-famous authors say about the days before stardom sought them out to the bestseller list, a writer writes, no matter what. Stephen King wrote in a trailer park. Ray Bradbury on borrowed typewriters in local libraries. Joseph Heller took eight years to write the masterpiece Catch 22 which was ironically rejected 22 times. You should read the list of famous rejection letters if you want inspiration.
The reason we must keep writing, is that it’s unwise to stop at one. Even if it gets picked up by the publishers in a freak coincidence, what next? Are you going to say, ‘Sorry, I could only do one?’ So the more you have, the better the chances of selling. At least people checking out your profile on social media and e-tailers might be impressed enough to try one of your offerings, and if they like it, they might even buy more.
Like someone said, there are two situations in life: one where you can control and another where you can’t. And in the latter scenario, the only thing you can do is control how you react to them. Tearing your hair out, getting frustrated and yelling out the window will not help. It might give temporary relief, but, in the long term, it will drag you down.
Another anecdote comes to mind, about this student who was impatient to learn the art of sword fighting from a Zen master. Student asks the master how long it would take him to be good at it. Master says ten years. Student says he doesn’t have that much time and that he needs to learn quickly. To which the master says in that case it will take twenty years.
One last dip into the philosophical river to shore up the morale. It’s from the Bhagavad Gita, Song of the Lord, a sacred Hindu text (part of the epic Mahabharata), where Lord Krishna, Bhagavan, tells Arjuna the reluctant warrior that his duty is to fight and leave the fruits of it to Him. The essence of it was expressed in the Rober redford movie titled the Legend of Bagger Vance with Will Smith playing Bagger Vance (Bhagavan) and Matt Damon the reluctant golfer was R.Junuh (Arjuna).
So keep writing and let the sales happen as and when. If we focus on the writing, the rest will take care of itself.
January 18, 2014
The new year and some thoughts on words
Hello, a quick post to say Happy New Year to all you guys. Hope you brought in 2014 with your friends and family and had fun while you were at it.
I spent my new year in a hill station near my hometown in South India, in Coonoor with my wife, in a magical, misty(cal) place called Tea Nest (should have been Tea Mist). Absolutely wonderful. There are places and experiences that defy description, that all the synonyms in the Thesaurus can’t do justice to; like the Blue Grotto in Capri, an evening in Taormina, sipping mountain tea by the seaside in Mykonos, trekking up the volcanic incline in Santorini, and a stay at Tea Nest. Ineffable, if that’s the word I’m looking for (to paraphrase P.G.W) comes pretty close to describing it.
Funny how much time and effort we spend trying to come up with the right word when the very words fail to describe a beautiful experience. Great sages and saints have been recorded to observe silence when facing some of the most important questions about the life, the universe and the meaning of life. Not because they were at a loss for words but because they knew the limitations of words. Yet, a clever turn of phrase here, a tongue in cheek pun there, makes most writers giddy with a sense of achievement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld out of context, for if we don’t know our own worth and indulge in a bit of self-congratulation, who will? But at the same time, we should keep in mind the limitation of words as well as their power. Wish you a happy new beginning again, and hope success finds us this year, however you define it.
I spent my new year in a hill station near my hometown in South India, in Coonoor with my wife, in a magical, misty(cal) place called Tea Nest (should have been Tea Mist). Absolutely wonderful. There are places and experiences that defy description, that all the synonyms in the Thesaurus can’t do justice to; like the Blue Grotto in Capri, an evening in Taormina, sipping mountain tea by the seaside in Mykonos, trekking up the volcanic incline in Santorini, and a stay at Tea Nest. Ineffable, if that’s the word I’m looking for (to paraphrase P.G.W) comes pretty close to describing it.
Funny how much time and effort we spend trying to come up with the right word when the very words fail to describe a beautiful experience. Great sages and saints have been recorded to observe silence when facing some of the most important questions about the life, the universe and the meaning of life. Not because they were at a loss for words but because they knew the limitations of words. Yet, a clever turn of phrase here, a tongue in cheek pun there, makes most writers giddy with a sense of achievement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld out of context, for if we don’t know our own worth and indulge in a bit of self-congratulation, who will? But at the same time, we should keep in mind the limitation of words as well as their power. Wish you a happy new beginning again, and hope success finds us this year, however you define it.
Amazon vs Apple, and why Amazon wins hands down.
Why Amazon is better than Apple?
I’ve been using Apple products for over two decades now and that’s what makes it hard to come down hard on a brand one is so usually passionate about. But that’s what Apple has driven me to, and I’m sure other self-publishers might agree.
Formatting for Kindle is a breeze. You just follow the simple guidelines, use manual page breaks in Word for each chapter, include pictures, create bookmarks, use hyperlinks, save and fill out the form on Amazon (after creating an account, obviously), and within a day, a day I repeat, your ebook is up for sale. And if you want to publish to Kobo and Barnes & Noble, Apple and you don’t mind shelling out a small percentage, you can use Draft@Digital, a very effective way to get your books online. They also help you publish to Createspace and Amazon, but I prefer uploading to Amazon on my own, and use D2D for the rest.
Why Apple sucks?
Apple, on the other hand, makes life so difficult and painfully frustrating that you want to spend the next hour ranting to them about how difficult and painfully frustrating it is to publish through Apple.
First, you have to go through a fairly long process to download the iTunes producer (it took me a couple of weeks to get it ‘approved’ if I remember right). Once you have that, you fill out the fields, upload your story and cover images, and no, it’s not voila! it’s up for sale. More often than not, it will return some error, the answers to which will take a lot of Googling and re-submitting.
Then Apple will take a while. A long while to get back.
I had submitted two ebooks, one of which went through, and the other was rejected because it didn’t have a TOC. Btw, they don’t send you a notification, you have to keep logging into your account to check the status. I wrote to them stating that it was a children’s book and it was one short story, and as such didn’t warrant a table of contents, but their formatting follows some bizarre NCX or whatever that doesn’t accept your submission if it doesn’t have a TOC.
So I created a TOC, and still it was rejected. While I was arguing my point that my other ebook went through without any TOC, that was rejected too. And recently, another ebook of mine was rejected, get this, because the title was in all caps.
I gave up on submitting direct to Apple, wrote them my heartfelt disappointment at the fact that they are making life so difficult which is the antithesis of any Apple product. I told them they should transfer the brand values of simplicity, ease of use and cool factor from their hardware into publishing.
And iBooks Author. I personally found it to be the clunkiest software to handle. It’s rigid, doesn’t let you add a TOC easily, creating chapters is messy … the list goes on.
On the whole, Apple’s epublishing process and the software just suck big time. At this rate, they might make Windows look cool.
I’ve been using Apple products for over two decades now and that’s what makes it hard to come down hard on a brand one is so usually passionate about. But that’s what Apple has driven me to, and I’m sure other self-publishers might agree.
Formatting for Kindle is a breeze. You just follow the simple guidelines, use manual page breaks in Word for each chapter, include pictures, create bookmarks, use hyperlinks, save and fill out the form on Amazon (after creating an account, obviously), and within a day, a day I repeat, your ebook is up for sale. And if you want to publish to Kobo and Barnes & Noble, Apple and you don’t mind shelling out a small percentage, you can use Draft@Digital, a very effective way to get your books online. They also help you publish to Createspace and Amazon, but I prefer uploading to Amazon on my own, and use D2D for the rest.
Why Apple sucks?
Apple, on the other hand, makes life so difficult and painfully frustrating that you want to spend the next hour ranting to them about how difficult and painfully frustrating it is to publish through Apple.
First, you have to go through a fairly long process to download the iTunes producer (it took me a couple of weeks to get it ‘approved’ if I remember right). Once you have that, you fill out the fields, upload your story and cover images, and no, it’s not voila! it’s up for sale. More often than not, it will return some error, the answers to which will take a lot of Googling and re-submitting.
Then Apple will take a while. A long while to get back.
I had submitted two ebooks, one of which went through, and the other was rejected because it didn’t have a TOC. Btw, they don’t send you a notification, you have to keep logging into your account to check the status. I wrote to them stating that it was a children’s book and it was one short story, and as such didn’t warrant a table of contents, but their formatting follows some bizarre NCX or whatever that doesn’t accept your submission if it doesn’t have a TOC.
So I created a TOC, and still it was rejected. While I was arguing my point that my other ebook went through without any TOC, that was rejected too. And recently, another ebook of mine was rejected, get this, because the title was in all caps.
I gave up on submitting direct to Apple, wrote them my heartfelt disappointment at the fact that they are making life so difficult which is the antithesis of any Apple product. I told them they should transfer the brand values of simplicity, ease of use and cool factor from their hardware into publishing.
And iBooks Author. I personally found it to be the clunkiest software to handle. It’s rigid, doesn’t let you add a TOC easily, creating chapters is messy … the list goes on.
On the whole, Apple’s epublishing process and the software just suck big time. At this rate, they might make Windows look cool.
How to solve the 'target audience not going beyond 20 problem' in facebook ads.
Ok, a quick post on a rather painful 20 plus hours trying to create a Facebook ad for this site. After being anti social for quite a while, mainly put off by people who 'liked' everything from status updates on food to posts on violence to animals (shouldn't there be a 'dislike' button for certain posts?), I decided to go back to facebook to let my friends know about my recent endeavours in the e-publishing area.
A week or so of researching and reading up on the subject and taking a course on Udemy which was very helpful, I decided to step into the unknown waters of social media ads with caution. Start with a small amount, they said, hence. This is what happened:
I went to the page I created for my ebooks on fb, and created an ad, went through the process fairly smoothly till I got to the payment page. I paid through Paypal, and the page went straight back to 'create an ad' page again, with no confirmation of any kind. And facebook is not known for reverting to customers is what I gathered when I entered my question in the search bar(also learnt that I wasn't the only one with this issue). Then someone in the forum suggested using Power Editor but that works only on Chrome, so did that. It must be one of the clunkiest pieces of software/tools that I've worked with in my life. After wrestling with it for a while (you have to hit the Campaign tab, create a campaign, and then create an ad, and hit upload button), I was puzzled by the audience reach which was 20. It just wouldn't go beyond that ridiculous number even if I included all the continents in the audience tab. I gave up and was toying with 'Pay with a tweet or a post' mode. Meanwhile I wrote in the fb forum, and again, I wasn't the only one with the issue. It was good to know in a safety in numbers sort of way, but it wasn't good when you realised fb wasn't answering anyone on the issue.
Then suddenly it occurred to me while I was fiddling with Power Editor why the number didn't go beyond the stubborn 20. Here's why. There's a field in the audience section where you decide who sees your message. In that there is a field that says : 'target people who are connected'. And if I entered my facebook page url in that field, the audience reach number immediately went to 20 and refused to budge. But it changed once I removed my facebook page I created for my books. And, oh, just received an email from facebook saying my ad was approved. Will let you know how that goes. Hope you found this useful.
A week or so of researching and reading up on the subject and taking a course on Udemy which was very helpful, I decided to step into the unknown waters of social media ads with caution. Start with a small amount, they said, hence. This is what happened:
I went to the page I created for my ebooks on fb, and created an ad, went through the process fairly smoothly till I got to the payment page. I paid through Paypal, and the page went straight back to 'create an ad' page again, with no confirmation of any kind. And facebook is not known for reverting to customers is what I gathered when I entered my question in the search bar(also learnt that I wasn't the only one with this issue). Then someone in the forum suggested using Power Editor but that works only on Chrome, so did that. It must be one of the clunkiest pieces of software/tools that I've worked with in my life. After wrestling with it for a while (you have to hit the Campaign tab, create a campaign, and then create an ad, and hit upload button), I was puzzled by the audience reach which was 20. It just wouldn't go beyond that ridiculous number even if I included all the continents in the audience tab. I gave up and was toying with 'Pay with a tweet or a post' mode. Meanwhile I wrote in the fb forum, and again, I wasn't the only one with the issue. It was good to know in a safety in numbers sort of way, but it wasn't good when you realised fb wasn't answering anyone on the issue.
Then suddenly it occurred to me while I was fiddling with Power Editor why the number didn't go beyond the stubborn 20. Here's why. There's a field in the audience section where you decide who sees your message. In that there is a field that says : 'target people who are connected'. And if I entered my facebook page url in that field, the audience reach number immediately went to 20 and refused to budge. But it changed once I removed my facebook page I created for my books. And, oh, just received an email from facebook saying my ad was approved. Will let you know how that goes. Hope you found this useful.
